
Historians at UNSW are uniquely global. We focus on imperial, colonial and transnational histories that rethink the grand narratives of the past and interrogate the way we understand our present. We research in regions across the world, including Africa, East and South-East Asia, Inner Asia, Europe and the Mediterranean, and the Pacific, all in conversation with Australian history. Our methodological expertise spans legal history, political history, environmental history, feminist history, history of science, cultural history, and more.
Historians at UNSW research and publish in four key areas:
● Comparative Imperial Histories
● Histories of Migration, Refugees, and Modern Diasporas
● Histories of East and South-East Asian Cultures
● Histories of Modern Gender
Ruth is a scholar of contemporary migration, refugee history and 20th-century Australia. She supervises projects in migration history, histories of the family, and contemporary Jewish history.
Alison is a scholar of the history of science and medicine with interests in population and the environment. She supervises projects on the history of science and medicine, intellectual history.
Andrew is a scholar of Germany, with particular interest in public memory and post-war reconstruction. He will supervise projects on all aspects of modern German history and postwar Europe.
Saliha is a historian of the law and politics of the empire. She supervises projects in global and imperial history, intellectual history, French and British colonisation in America and Africa.
David is a historian of Britain and Ireland. He supervises projects on most aspects of modern British and Irish history and the history of money.
Emma is a filmmaker and scholar of slavery and unfree labour and its aftermaths in Africa, Australia and the Caribbean. Emma supervises histories of slavery and forced migration.
Nick is a scholar of Mediterranean history and the Greek diaspora. He will supervise projects on global history in any period, empires and state formation.
Greg is a historian of Korean premodern and early modern intellectual history focusing on literature and religion in the larger East Asian context. He supervises projects on Korea and East Asia.
Lisa is a legal historian of the British Empire, the early National United States, and settler colonialism. Lisa supervises projects in global and comparative history and colonial Australian history.
Jan is a historian of the Holocaust and its aftermaths in Central Europe and Australia. He supervises projects on the Holocaust and twentieth-century Europe.
Anne O’Brien a historian of poverty, welfare and philanthropy in colonial and twentieth-century Australia. Anne is not taking on supervisions at this time.
Mina is a specialist on gender, in the Philippines and the Filipino diaspora as well as the history of dress and textiles in Southeast Asia from the twentieth century to the present.
Zora is a historian of 20th century Australia, with a particular focus on gender, sexuality, feminism and migration. Zora will supervise projects in gender, feminist, social and migration history.
Pan is a scholar of love, marriage and family in China. She supervises projects on the recent history of gender, love, marriage and media in China and Chinese marriage migration.
Joel’s research focuses on the impact of imperial expansion in southwest China from the seventeenth through the twentieth century. He will supervise projects in Chinese history.
Louise Edwards is a historian of gender in modern China century
John Gascoigne is a historian of science in the British Empire
John Ingleson is a historian of 20th century Indonesia labour and social history
Grace Karskens is a scholar of Australian colonial and cross-cultural history, Aboriginal history and environmental history
Martyn Lyons is a scholar of French revolutionary and Napoleonic history, and the history of books, reading and writing in Europe and Australia
David Miller is a historian of science and technology, 1750 to present
Nicolas Rasmussen is a historian of life science and medicine
Ian Tyrrell is a historian of the nineteenth and early twentienth-century United States; and environmental history
During term-time, UNSW History hosts presentations by cutting edge scholars about their current research. These are usually held on a Tuesday at 12:30pm, AEST. All are welcome to attend. More details are available here.
This year, UNSW will host the Australian Historical Association (AHA) conference, the peak conference held annually by and for historians working in and/or about Australia. We celebrate forty years since UNSW hosted the first AHA conference in 1981. This year’s theme is Unfinished Business. The Uluru Statement, Black Lives Matter protests, toppled statues and the Whitlam Dismissal are just a few of many examples of history’s unfinished business in the contemporary world.
Here are some recent publications from our historians.
Ruth Balint Destination Elsewhere: Displaced Persons and their Quest to Leave Postwar Europe (Cornell University Press, 2021).
Andrew Beattie, Allied Internment Camps in Occupied Germany: Extrajudicial Detention in the Name of Denazification, 1945–1950 (Cambridge University Press, 2019).
Emma Christopher, Freedom in White and Black: A Lost Story of the Illegal Slave Trade and Its Global Legacy (University of Minnesota Press, 2020).
Lisa Ford, The King’s Peace: Law and Order in the British Empire (Harvard University Press, 2021).
Jarrod Hore, Visions of Nature: How Landscape Photography Shaped Settler Colonialism (University of California Press, 2022).
Grace Karskens, People of the River: Lost Worlds of Early Australia (Allen and Unwin, 2020).
Mina Roces, The Filipino Migration Experience: Global Agents of Change (Cornell University Press, 2021)
British Imperial Commissions of Inquiry.
In the 1820s, Royal Commissions of Inquiry were dispatched to almost every colony in the British Empire to rethink imperial law and governance after the cataclysm of the Napoleonic Wars. This project explores the vast archives created by the Commissions with particular emphasis on how evidence was gathered and who got to have a say in imperial reform.
The Laureate Centre for History & Population
Launched in July 2021, this Centre asks how, where, and why population policies emerged over the 19th and 20th centuries, and what their present legacies are, especially in the Asia-Pacific region.
The New Earth Histories Research Program
This project brings the history of geosciences and the history of select world cosmologies together. We aim to produce a fresh and cosmopolitan history of environmental sciences, analysing the significance of geological time and multiple cosmologies for global modernity itself.
Remembering Sydney’s post-war Greek neighbourhoods, 1949-1972
During the height of the post-war immigration boom, Sydney’s metropolitan neighbourhoods played a key role in the reconstitution of migrant identities. Taking a cluster of these neighbourhoods as its case studies, this project will inscribe the memories of Greek-Australians into a history of post-war migration.
A History of Domestic Violence in Australia 1850-2020
The project aims to investigate similarities and differences in women's lived experiences of domestic violence across ethnic, cultural and class contexts; to historicise its cultural representations and their impacts; and to identify and assess policy and legal measures to constrain domestic violence.